What a time to visit

Ok, so, if it's not already painfully obvious to anyone that has been attempting to follow this blog, I would like to state a fact: I am a horrible blogger. Abysmal, actually. I tend to forget about my blog. My apologies. I promise that once I'm stateside, there will be a flood of interesting things, but right now, life in Egypt is very easy to get distracted with.

Go figure, I've come to study here right around the time of the election to the Majlas Al-Shaab, basically parliament, here in Egypt. The elections are November 28th, and things are really starting to get interesting. I usually enjoy politics, but it's been a whole different matter following the Egyptian elections, because the setting and the context are so vastly different from what I'm used to seeing in America.

Here's some background: Egypt is, on paper, a democracy. A democracy with all the hallmark democratic institutions and courts and parliament and a president. Here's the problem. Egypt has had the same president since 1981, when the last president, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated. Now, here's the trick; due to the assassination, in 1981 the new president Hosni Mubarak declared a state of emergency that came with its own set of emergency rules and laws which essentially gave Hosni Mubarak the power to do what he saw fit, be it over-ruling court decisions or arresting dissenters and writers. The state of emergency has never ended. Twenty-nine years after the assassination of Anwar Sadat, Egypt is still in a state of emergency rule, with no signs of this changing. It's also rather strongly suspected (come on, everyone knows...) that the elections are rigged. Hosni Mubarak has never really been popular, and with the state of Egypt, and the economy here, it's really no wonder. Enter Al-Ichwan Al-Muslimeen, The Muslim Brotherhood, a rather popular Egyptian political and religious group started in 1928. To keep it simple,  Al-Ichwan believe Islam is the solution to the social, political, and economical problems facing Egypt. They also happen to be illegal in Egypt, courtesy of President Mubarak. So, in the elections, the Ichwan candidates run as independents, and the last parliamentary elections, they took 1/5 of the seats. This year, Mubarak and the ruling party want to make sure this does not happen again. For months now, there have been news stories about the government taking action against Al-Ichwan, be it laws against mass text messaging(A primary way Al-Ichwan reach their voters) or shutting down TV stations, arresting demonstrators, and people putting up signs for Ichwan candidates. Just this week the police got violent at a march in support of Al-Ichwan candidates.

It certainly has been an interesting process to watch, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing what happens on the 28th. In the meantime, some light reading:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/11/20101119212833744148.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/10/20101019211047129994.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/11/20101117115630882819.html